Twenty-Five Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall: An Empirical Revisit of West German Consumers' Attitudes Toward Products and Brands from Former East Germany

More than 25 years after the German reunification, data show that products/brands from the eastern regions of Germany (“Neue Länder”) still do not have significant shares in the country's western part (“Alte Länder”). To analyze potential reasons for this phenomenon, our current study replicates a previous study that investigated selected attitudes of Alte Länder consumers toward products/brands from the Neue Länder. It is shown that factors such as consumer ethnocentrism, product judgment, willingness to buy, and economic animosity continue to influence consumer behavior and as such our study offers potential explanation for the failure of Neue Länder products/brands in the western regions of Germany.     

R&D Investments and Tax Incentives: The Role of Intra-Firm Cross-Border Collaboration*

U.S. multinational corporations increasingly use intra-firm, cross-border research collaboration to disperse R&D across different countries. This paper investigates the implications of such collaboration on the abilities of firms to garner benefits from R&D tax incentives. We find that the association between R&D intensity and tax incentives is three to five times larger when firms have extensive cross-border collaboration connected to a country. We also find that the effect is stronger when local intellectual property protection is weaker and when local innovation resources are higher. Our results suggest that cross-border collaboration helps firms achieve more tax-efficient R&D investments both by reducing the nontax frictions posed by weak intellectual property protection and by increasing the nontax benefits of foreign R&D.     

美国调节区域经济差异的财政措施及启示

美国的地理位置和历史文化决定了美国区域经济的发展严重不平衡.本文分析了美国政府对落后地区经济的财政调节措施,这对我国在市场经济条件下调节区域经济,推进西部大开发,一定具有深刻的启示.     

社会资本与农村剩余劳动力转移问题分析

社会资本是一种与物质资本、人力资本相区别的存在于社会结构中的个人资源,它对个人的发展与进步具有重要的作用。随着农村整体社会资本的下降,我国的农村剩余劳动力转移难度加大。如何提升农村劳动力的社会资本,进而推进农村剩余劳动力转移,是关系我国农村经济发展一个重要问题。     

Internal labour markets in the Australian banking industry: their nature prior to the Second World War and their recent decline

This paper uses evidence from late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century personnel records of two Australian banks to examine the nature of internal labour markets prior to the Second World War. It is argued that the industry possessed all the classic features of internal labour markets: limited ports of entry, internal promotion, long careers, and assignment of wages by well-defined rules. The paper then examines the reasons why banks adopted internal labour markets. Finally, the paper examines the recent decline of internal labour markets and examines the role of technological and social changes in this decline.     

防范合谋的激励机制研究综述

通过对合谋内涵、舍谋成因以及防范合谋的激励机制设计三个方面的国内外主要文献进行的回顾与述评结果发现，我国在防范合谋的激励机制设计方面主要存在下列问题：国内许多文献认为信息不对称是合谋的成因，但实际上合谋的成因是互惠，信息不对称只是为合谋提供了条件；现有理论主要从激励经济学角度研究防范合谋的机制设计的，但人类行为动机的产生和发展、变化是一个复杂、微妙的心理过程，仅从激励角度研究合谋问题不足以取得满意的效果。     

American-style Indexed Executive Stock Options

This paper develops a new pricing model for American-style indexed executive stock options. We rely on a basic model framework and an indexation scheme first proposed by Johnson and Tian (2000a) in their analysis of European-style indexed options. Our derivation of the valuation formula represents an instructive example of the usefulness of the change-of-numeraire technique. In the paper's numerical section we implement the valuation formula and demonstrate that not only may the early exercise premium be significant but also that the delta of the American-style option is typically much larger than the delta of the otherwise identical (value-matched) European-style option. Vega is higher for indexed options than for conventional options but largely independent of whether the options are European- or American-style. This has important implications for the design of executive compensation contracts. We finally extend the analysis to cover the case where the option contracts are subject to delayed vesting. We show that for realistic parameter values, delayed vesting leads only to a moderate reduction in the value of the American-style indexed executive stock option.     

Investment Opportunities and the Relation Between Equity Value and Employees' Bonus

A sample of firms where employee stock options and other long‐term incentives are absent but an annual bonus is required is examined. A positive relation is found between firm equity value and stock bonus but not cash bonus. The positive relation is stronger when the firm has greater investment opportunities. Additionally, the relation is shown to be nonlinear in the sense that the marginal effect of stock bonus on equity value is positive but decreasing (negative) when the stock bonus is below (above) the breakpoint. Overall, the annual stock bonus is valued positively by investors even though it is linked to the firm's contemporaneous but not future performance.     

A note on incentive incompatibility under franchising

This note provides a formal demonstration of the incentive incompatibility problem that exists in franchisor — franchisee relationships. It is shown that incentive incompatibility exists with respect to both price and quality. Several contractual mechanisms designed to mitigate the incompatibility problem are examined.     

国有经济结构分析与调整对策

国有经济战略调整是中央提出的国有企业改革和发展的重要目标。在计划经济体制向市场经济体制的转轨过程中，国有经济的分布仍不够合理，国有企业在竞争领域仍然占有很大的比重，在经济结构的优化方面仍然存在着一些不容忽视的问题。因此，对这一问题的深入研究，具有重要意义。